E911 or 911 service involves providing call centers or public safety access points (PSAPs) that answer 911 calls and dispatch emergency personnel based on the calls. An important part of E911 service is identifying and dispatching the emergency personnel to the location of the emergency. In order to facilitate such identifying and dispatching, conventional PSTN switches store and provide street address information to PSAPs for 911 calls.
For voice over IP (VoIP) calls, VoIP E911 standards promulgated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) require that Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers store the geographic location and identity information of subscribers so that such information may be provided to emergency personnel when a subscriber initiates a 911 call from the subscriber's portable IP communications device. FCC rules also require that VoIP service providers transmit the location and identity information of a subscriber to a PSAP when the subscriber dials 911 from the subscriber's portable IP communications device.
In order for emergency personnel to be dispatched to the correct location, the VoIP service provider must maintain an accurate database associating a portable IP communications device with its actual geographic location. Thus, when a portable IP communications device is moved from one geographic location to another, the geographic location information in the service provider's database should be updated. Currently, a subscriber must remember to notify his or her service provider of a geographic location update when a portable IP communications device is moved from one geographic location to another. Relying on the subscriber's memory to trigger the updating of the geographic information is undesirable because the subscriber may forget to update the information. As a result, an E911 call originating from the subscriber's office may result in emergency personnel being dispatched to the subscriber's home, if the subscriber's VoIP telephone is moved from the subscriber's home to the subscriber's office without updating the stored geographic information for the subscriber.
Accordingly, there exists a need for methods, systems, and computer program products for providing improved E911 registration assistance for subscribers using portable IP communications devices.